The present research provides insight into substance use patterns across Europe by using a large international adolescent sample, multidimensional indicators and a variety of substances. Substance use patterns are helpful when targeting policy and prevention strategies.
This study's purpose is to describe European adolescents' alcohol use patterns by grouping adolescents regarding their current alcohol use by cluster analysis (CA). Discriminant and latent profile analyses (LPA) evaluate and validate the solution that will be described further by ANOVAs. From 25 European countries, 57,771 students (49.4% male, 13.87 years) are grouped using hierarchical and k-means clustering. Alcohol use is measured by frequency of drinking occasions during the previous month and number of beverages consumed on the last drinking occasion. CA suggests four drinking patterns: mild (73.6%), episodic (20.0%), frequent (3.8%), and heavy episodic use (2.5%). Discriminant analysis attests a classification reliability of 94%, and confirmatory LPA replicates the cluster solution with a satisfying model fit. Three of the found patterns fulfill criteria for heavy drinking and underline the importance of individualized indicated prevention by promoting responsible use.
This paper presents cross-cultural research using data from the Second International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD-2) to evaluate the strength and characteristics of the relationship between different kinds of juvenile delinquency and alcohol use, and to investigate whether, and how, different drinking cultures may influence this relationship. The setting is a school-based survey with a selfreport questionnaire in a sample of 7th, 8th and 9th grade students (comprising 12-16 year olds) from 25 European countries. After recording data on alcohol consumption among young people in different European countries, we assessed the degree to which property offences, violent offences and gang membership were associated with the use of alcohol. In addition, a multilevel analysis (MLA) was carried out to ascertain whether the association between delinquency and alcohol use was influenced by variations in drinking cultures. Different drinking patterns were observed in Mediterranean and non-Mediterranean countries. Alcohol consumption was more closely related to involvement in violent crimes than to property offences, and correlated with the frequency and seriousness of delinquent behaviour everywhere. MLA showed that gang membership increased the probability of alcohol abuse to a greater degree in non-Mediterranean countries, while involvement in delinquency proved to be associated with alcohol abuse to a similar degree in the different cultural contexts considered. With regard to cultural influences on the relationships between juvenile delinquency and alcohol use, we ascertained that cultural attitudes towards alcohol influence the delinquency-alcohol relationship at the group level rather than the individual level.
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